Journalist, entrepreneur and marketing firm founder. I write about higher ed and early career issues. Pithily. I was pontificating about Millennials and Millennial culture back when they were still known as Gen Y.

A BA In Burger Flipping: Is College Credit In Exchange For Life Experience A Fair Trade?

What if your years of managing a Burger King in high school counted toward credit for a business degree in human resources? What if babysitting helped you get a certificate in early childhood education? The life experience for college credit deal has long been associated with scammy online pop-up offers (Get a PhD based on life experience! No studying necessary!) and predatory for-profit institutions, but competency-based education has also been quietly offered in one form or another by credible colleges and is poised to grow in popularity as a potential revenue source for cash-strapped institutions and students who want to earn credentials in the shortest time and at the lowest cost. But should we worry that the credit-for-experience bargain shortchanges students and dilutes educational quality?

The New York Timesran a piece on the weekend focused on New Jersey’s Thomas Edison State College, which, along with Western Governors University, is something of a pioneer in the competency-based education sphere. As the piece quotes the school’s president George A. Pruitt:

“We don’t care how or where the student learned - whether it was from spending three years in a monastery – as long as that learning is documented by some reliable assessment technique. Learning takes place continuously throughout our lives. If you’re a success in the insurance industry, and you’re in the million-dollar round table, what difference does it make if you learned your skills at Prudential or at Wharton?”

The example Pruitt gives is an skewed a one. Working your way up from the mail room at Prudential and eventually being able to parlay decades of on-the-job experience into a diploma for your office wall is one thing; these type of students are likely long past the age when the “full” college experience of professors, classes, group work and networking opps are of interest or career benefit to them. As Jayson Boyers argues over at the Huffington Post, competency-based education omits the social and relationship-based aspects of a college education, which often yield as much career benefit as classroom knowledge to those just entering the workforce.

“A full educational experience is more than just consuming information from books and course study materials and then regurgitating it back. A large part of a well-rounded education depends on the experience and knowledge gained from interacting in teams and establishing important personal relationships. If we are truly invested in providing a quality higher education experience to all students – traditional and non-traditional – how can we omit this critical component completely from students’ college education?” he writes.

In addition to the argument about the competency-based education approach presenting a poor simulacrum of the traditional higher education experience, there is also the nagging question as to whether the students who pursue this type of accreditation have truly gained the same level of subject area knowledge and expertise as those who have slogged through four years of course work. For every Mary Carney who had been working as a nurse since 1980 and wanted to finally upgrade her associate’s degree to a bachelor’s and then a master’s, isn’t there also the possibility of awarding credit to students who are simply savvy test takers without the practical skills to back up their ability to ace exams? Is this simply the post-secondary equivalent of the “teach the test” approach that has been derided as epidemic in many corners of the K-12 system?

It’s a question worth pondering, especially as more states consider how to get aboard the competency-based bandwagon. For example, Wisconsin has indicated interest in pursuing ‘flexible degree’ options within their higher education system of 13 universities and 13 two-year college system. Students could opt for self-paced courses that would cost the same as traditional credit courses, or they could skip the course and simply pay for the competency exam they would need to pass in order to earn credit. Last year, Ray Cross, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges, told Inside Higher Ed that he expects some students will simply take a free MOOC (massive online open course) offered by another school and then opt to write their competency exam based on the what they learned therein or knowledge they acquired independently. If that sounds like a daunting responsibility for a college freshman – no matter how self-motivated – to shoulder, the data backs that up. Not only are those who take a greater number of online courses less likely to ever earn degrees, new research from Columbia shows that the rise of online education actually widens the achievement gap between demographic groups, with those who struggle in a traditional college setting having an even more difficult time navigating the waters of MOOCs and distance ed.

Despite criticisms and potential drawbacks, competency-based learning’s appeal extends beyond its low cost for both education providers and consumers. It also neatly fits in with the current climate of degree inflation. As more and more jobs require applicants to have degrees (even if the job task could be performed by someone without a post-secondary education), the ability to secure such a credential in short order and at low cost seems like the perfect the solution for ‘underqualified’ job hunters. Unfortunately, for both students and the employers who would hire them, the increasing difficulty in securing the work experience necessary to demonstrate competency sans degree favors the less-rigorous test it and forget it model of competency-based learning. But really, how much damage could an underskilled file clerk do?

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It’s also worth noting that many graduate programs won’t accept your Bachelor’s degree if it includes credit for life experiences. And in response to the assertion that learning comes from more than books, that is why I feel everyone should work in college. If you’re graduating college and still have not held a job with a paycheck and taxes for more than a couple months, I would never hire you. College credit shouldn’t be given for just doing what you have to do.

You may be right that the “life experience for college credit deal” can be a scam, but if you had read the Times article closely, you would have noticed a distinction made between credit for experience and credit for learning derived from experience. Competency-based education and credit for experience are not the same thing: how many people do you know who have loads of experience but still manage to be incompetent?

What Thomas Edison State College does is assess the knowledge and skills that people acquire regardless of where it came from. If a student can demonstrate that he or she knows everything that would have been covered in the equivalent course, what more could you ask? Would you make a native French speaker sit through French 101, if he or she can demonstrate the skills taught in such a course? Your example of the person who works his or her way up from the mail room at Prudential is exactly the kind of person who benefits from this competency-based approach: Thomas Edison State College is only open to adults, most of whom come to college with knowledge earned through experience. Yes, the social and relationship-based aspects of higher ed are minimized in this disaggregated model (though there is online interaction between students and staff) but as you accurately note, these adult students don’t come to Thomas Edison looking for that kind of experience. Some are too busy, some live too far away, and others are clear on their goals and are on a fast track to achieve them.

Much of your criticism of competency-based education could also be directed at traditional higher ed: students who are good test-takers or paper-writers can also skate by without actually learning anything that might be of value to an employer. Since when does passing 40 courses and living in a dorm necessarily equal the skills and knowledge that prepare one for the workforce? Working toward acquisition of competencies, and documenting the ones students have acquired on their own, is a much better way to align a degree with future success in a field of a student’s choosing.

Excellent article Maureen. Fine research as well. Here’s my $0.02. In my estimation as well as experience, a degree shows me you can pass a test. Experience shows me you’ve been tested and passed. Having been on the resume reviewing/interviewing/hiring side of the table, I can honestly say that on several occasions I have chosen the person with experience over the degreed person more times than not. I’m an advocate for classroom education- content knowledge. I also champion the importance of having the necessary process skills to achieve the overall objective, which is sustained success in the business world. One without the other is an equation for getting replaced. Give me 30 days with a person who merely has an associate’s degree and life experiences and I’ll teach him/her how to take the position from a more qualified four-year college graduate. Trust me, I’ living proof. I’ve gotten several positions in various fields, (IT, finance, and accounting) without having the college degree. All achieved through my life’s experience and a mindset I call, “Corporate Swagger”. www.corporateswagger.co @corpswagger www.facebook.com/corporateswagger

I support varied means towards job readiness. I no more consider a baccalaureate degree a universal job requirement than I consider most high school diplomas adequate preparation for life. Job training, vocational schools, associate’s degrees and apprenticeships should be real options for many careers. Where I do take issue is with offering college credit for living. Everyone has lived and by definition has had life experience. Those things belong on a resume not a syllabus. The point should not be to erode the standards of the baccalaureate (or graduate) degree, but to reign in its omnipotence. http://heresheisboys.com/2012/08/23/whats-your-post-secondary-motivation/

Is College Credit In Exchange For Life Experience A Fair Trade? Well, no – not if its based on experience alone; however, if that student can demonstrate college level LEARNING in Burger Flipping, then my answer is yes. For example… If the student can write a 10-20 page paper on what they learned from the experience about food preparation and storage, restaurant management, marketing, accounting, retail management principles etc, in a way that correlates with a college’s curriculum, then I would say, yes, the exchange is a fair one.

Good topic. I, like several other commentors, did not go to college. I went right to work. Looking back, I might have decided otherwise; however, it would be hard to imagine college prepping me better for life in the working world than what I have learned by actually “getting in there” and learning hands on. I’ve been blessed and fortunate to have had several managers of large corporations hire me because of the measurable success I’ve had in other companies in Sales, Training, and Management. Along the way, I’ve had to have meaningful “Fatherly” talks with a few young folks about basic life skills, not to mention Business skills….and frankly, some of the young graduates I have worked with lately couldn’t spell or write their way out of a box! I know there are still many honorable and good colleges out there, but the level of education in the U.S. that I see is not nearly as good as decades ago. It seems that political correctness, ethic diversity, and an “everyone gets a ribbon” mentality is the norm now over hard work, responsibility for actions, and a desire to excel.

While I agree “life experience” is a dubious measure of what knowledge one has acquired, I do believe it is a worthy consideration for programs like Western Governors University insofar as it measures readiness for a competency-based program. WGU does not exchange credit for life experience.

Having been a WGU student, I can say that its application of the competency-based model works for a particular sub-group. We are middle-aged adults pursuing second degrees or returning to school after years of work experience. We do not need the socialization or networking offered by traditional campus learning. We have a working knowledge of the core competencies of our majors and are getting the theory behind it as well as other perspectives, ideas and practices which broaden our thinking and enhance our contributions in the workplace.

Competency-based learning is, by its very design, a model for experienced adults who are furthering their careers and/or need to make themselves more salable in this difficult job market. It allows them to accelerate through subjects for which they have attained an adequate level of mastery. “Good test taking” skills won’t get one very far.

I believe work experience has its place as a means of assessing a person’s readiness for the competency-based education model as opposed to serving as a measure of what has been learned.

This article was recently posted to a group on LinkedIn and I decided to post my comment here as well.

As someone who has pursued credits through prior learning assessment (PLA), I feel the need to chime in here. This article seems to have missed the point of PLA. By no means is it a blanket award of credits just because someone was a shift manager at a Burger King. (I actually was a shift manager for a Burger King and a Taco Bell in my younger years and could have used that experience to support a request for credits in inventory management if I so chose). Instead, it is a very rigorous evaluation by experts in the subject matter to ensure your experience has resulted in a college level understanding of the topic in which you are requesting credits.

SUNY Empire State College takes the PLA process very seriously and requires the student to write a comprehensive, critical thinking paper that showcases their understanding of theory and practice and how that relates to the subject matter. Imagine, if you will, a final project at the end of a 15-week college course. In the final project, the student must demonstrate their understanding of the course’s stated learning outcomes. If the student is unable to do so, they may not receive credits for the course they took. The same goes for the PLA process at Empire State College. I wrote a 10+ page paper that was fully cited and in proper APA style that demonstrated my clear understanding of the theories and concepts of management and leadership. I gained this knowledge in a practical manner through management roles and on-the-job trainings as well as personal readings and research—much like a student in a college course, except I did it of my own initiative and on my own time throughout the course of my 18+ year corporate career.

In my paper and the subsequent 2hr phone interview with my assigned evaluator, a woman who holds a Ph.D. and is a college professor that teaches management and leadership college courses, and owns a corporate consulting business that revolves around management and leadership principles, I was able to demonstrate my college level understanding of each of the learning outcomes posted for those two courses.

The PLA process is not meant to diminish the college experience, but to allow the student to get to their end-goal a little quicker. Another important fact is that credible colleges that award credits gained through PLAs only accept so many “outside” credits to attain a degree with their institution. A student cannot come in to SUNY Empire State College and get a degree based solely on PLAs, or transfer credits, for that matter. Students at SUNY Empire State College can only bring in or PLA a certain amount of credits and the rest must be attained through courses taken at SUNY Empire State College. Therefore, students pursuing credits through PLA do not miss out on the “college experience” as they must attend a significant amount of classes too.

Companies focus too much on a degree and not on important skills. Example: If you are going to be a doctor or lawyer than yes a degree is very important, but other positions may not require a degree. Work ethic, people skills, leadership, experience, and common sense are just as important as a degree. A kid with 4 years of military can easily be a better hire than a kid with a 4 year degree. That kid flipping burgers understand work ethic, experience, and responsibility and if he is under a good manager could be molded into a great asset for the company. HR departments never try to learn the job that they are hiring for so they just use the must have a degree to screen out workers. I also believe that certificate should equal degree because you weed out the extra classes and get to the meat of what you need to do the job. How many college students go into debt and default on their loans? This isn’t being responsible. College is big business so of course they want everyone to pay into them.

I am a graduate of SUNY Empire State College and did not get my degree in Burger Flipping. And yes I do have very few life experience credits in a working field of over thirty years and mastery of a historical dying art in addition to a degree I earned previously for the same. This previous degree could not give me the working knowledge I learned through out the decades of business and experience in this field. Just as a Doctor starting out in practice is not “fielded” in years of practice of seeing a variety of patients with different conditions. It is not possible to acheive a degree soley through life experience, it is hard work. SUNY Empire State College is not only advanced in their technological capabilities, forerunners with an online teaching capacity where many notable Colleges and universities are now only entering into, the reality of what the future holds; SUNY ESC has a student body and one on one mentoring for all undergraduates attending in many locations throughout the State of New York. It is the greatest genius body of mentors available who are dedicated, internationally recognized, and magnanimous. SUNY Empire State College reaches around the globe mentoring people in many different countries who would normally never be able to attain an education. SUNY Empire fosters individually guided lessons rounding out each person with the same degree requirements as any other higher learning institutions. Why is Forbes magazine allowing a marketer to berate something they have no knowledge of?

there are many universities are offering this kind of programs, even people attention is also increasing towards this off course there are many capable and efficient people who are really depressed that they have no degree. now they have opportunity to get life experience degree too. some highly recommended universities are http://kaplanuniversity.com http://www.usauniversitiesonline.com/life-experience-college-degree/ , you can google it to find more.

There are many world class universities that offer students the opportunity to earn credit for life and work experience. One of these is the University of Massachusetts Amherst. UMass Amherst has a program called the University Without Walls www.umass.edu/uww Founded in 1971, this program was one of the first adult bachelor’s degree completion programs in the U.S. It was was one of 17 similar programs funded by the US Department of Education and the Ford Foundation in the early 70′s. This program has graduated over 3000 students, with hundreds going on to earn advanced degrees. UWW offers adult students the opportunity to earn transfer credits for substantial professional trainings and certifications (burger flipping would not qualify) directly related to their degree concentration and has an innovative written prior learning portfolio process which allows students to demonstrate the college-level learning they have gained through their life and work experience. The UWW degree program is adult student-centered and academically rigorous. Students must meet the university’s general education requirements through coursework just like all other university students and are required to earn 45 credits in their degree concentration. Originally an on-campus and community-based program, most UWW students now complete their degrees 100% online. UWW students earn a BA or BS from the University of Massachusetts Amherst- the flagship campus of the Massachusetts’ public higher education system and an internationally recognized research university. UWW students have not reported a problem with employment opportunities or going on to graduate school because they earned credits for their life, work and training experience. Before we throw the baby out with the bath water, let’s remember that there are many well-established, reputable, academically rigorous and well-respected degree programs that afford adult students with the opportunity to earn credit for life and work experience.